What is our focus?
Every server has a focus. You have PvP servers whose focus is on how to provide the best player combat experience. You have creative servers like the Voxel Box whose goal is to create the best environment for their players to build spectacular builds. You have survival servers where the focus is to provide the best player versus environment experience. Then you have the roleplaying servers whose focus is on immersing their players in their characters and in the game.
Then there is CFEW, a server without a focus. At the moment, our server does not have a well defined focus. We are not a survival server, we are not a creative server, we are not a PvP server, we are not a roleplaying server. We try to be all of those, and we do none of them well.
It wasn’t always like this. Let me take you back two years ago, to September 9th, 2010, the day I joined the server. I was new to SMP. I chose a random server from some server listing site. I joined with a friend, and there was only one other person online at the time: Clownfish. The server had none of the features that it does now. It didn’t have a currency, it didn’t have zones, and it didn’t have multiple worlds. There were no nicks, no custom ranks, no colored text. I could have left then and there to find a server that had a wide array of features, but I didn’t.
Why did I stay? At first I stayed because Clownfish was a genuinely nice guy. He didn’t treat me with disrespect or condescension. Then I began to meet some other people. I met LeoNovas, who was an OP even before I was, and was for lack of a better term, my best friend here on the server. I met a guy named TrueScopes, who had built a house just down the road from me at spawn. There were others, and in those initial times we did a great deal of exploring and building together.
No one was focused on promotions back then. No one was focused on becoming an OP back then. No one was trying to gain more influence on the server back then. We weren’t focused on trying to add new features just for the hell of it. We added things back then because we genuinely needed them. We promoted people to OP because we had a genuine need for people to watch over the server. In fact, that is how I was first promoted to OP. It was little more than a week or so after I joined. Clownfish was leaving for the night, and there were no OPs on. Someone needed to watch over the server, and Clown asked me to do so. And I did, and I have been doing so ever since.
The CFEW that I joined no longer exists. It no longer in the slightest bit resembles what I joined. Now we bicker fight over the most trivial of things. Anything we do now has to go through arduous debates that no one enjoys. Want to make a simple suggestion? Expect to be required to fight for and defend your idea tooth and nail to have anything change.
We have become a feature focused server, not a player focused one. We focus on what new world we can add to our bloated list of worlds that no one touches. We focus on trying to provide every imaginable game play style as possible. There is no uniformity. Everyone has to have their own custom rank, their own custom display name, their own chat colors. We’ve forgotten how to say no. Just because an idea might provide a slight bit of fun, that does not mean we should add it, especially if we don’t actually have a genuine need for it.
We lack social cohesion now. We are not a community. There hasn’t been a CFEW community for a very long time. There is an OP community now, an Adventure World community, and the list goes on.
We have grown too large and too bloated. It is time to trim the fat. It is time to go back to our roots. It is time to go back to what made us great in those early days.
If I joined CFEW today, I would not stay.
I have this question for you all: What is our focus now, and what should it be?
Every server has a focus. You have PvP servers whose focus is on how to provide the best player combat experience. You have creative servers like the Voxel Box whose goal is to create the best environment for their players to build spectacular builds. You have survival servers where the focus is to provide the best player versus environment experience. Then you have the roleplaying servers whose focus is on immersing their players in their characters and in the game.
Then there is CFEW, a server without a focus. At the moment, our server does not have a well defined focus. We are not a survival server, we are not a creative server, we are not a PvP server, we are not a roleplaying server. We try to be all of those, and we do none of them well.
It wasn’t always like this. Let me take you back two years ago, to September 9th, 2010, the day I joined the server. I was new to SMP. I chose a random server from some server listing site. I joined with a friend, and there was only one other person online at the time: Clownfish. The server had none of the features that it does now. It didn’t have a currency, it didn’t have zones, and it didn’t have multiple worlds. There were no nicks, no custom ranks, no colored text. I could have left then and there to find a server that had a wide array of features, but I didn’t.
Why did I stay? At first I stayed because Clownfish was a genuinely nice guy. He didn’t treat me with disrespect or condescension. Then I began to meet some other people. I met LeoNovas, who was an OP even before I was, and was for lack of a better term, my best friend here on the server. I met a guy named TrueScopes, who had built a house just down the road from me at spawn. There were others, and in those initial times we did a great deal of exploring and building together.
No one was focused on promotions back then. No one was focused on becoming an OP back then. No one was trying to gain more influence on the server back then. We weren’t focused on trying to add new features just for the hell of it. We added things back then because we genuinely needed them. We promoted people to OP because we had a genuine need for people to watch over the server. In fact, that is how I was first promoted to OP. It was little more than a week or so after I joined. Clownfish was leaving for the night, and there were no OPs on. Someone needed to watch over the server, and Clown asked me to do so. And I did, and I have been doing so ever since.
The CFEW that I joined no longer exists. It no longer in the slightest bit resembles what I joined. Now we bicker fight over the most trivial of things. Anything we do now has to go through arduous debates that no one enjoys. Want to make a simple suggestion? Expect to be required to fight for and defend your idea tooth and nail to have anything change.
We have become a feature focused server, not a player focused one. We focus on what new world we can add to our bloated list of worlds that no one touches. We focus on trying to provide every imaginable game play style as possible. There is no uniformity. Everyone has to have their own custom rank, their own custom display name, their own chat colors. We’ve forgotten how to say no. Just because an idea might provide a slight bit of fun, that does not mean we should add it, especially if we don’t actually have a genuine need for it.
We lack social cohesion now. We are not a community. There hasn’t been a CFEW community for a very long time. There is an OP community now, an Adventure World community, and the list goes on.
We have grown too large and too bloated. It is time to trim the fat. It is time to go back to our roots. It is time to go back to what made us great in those early days.
If I joined CFEW today, I would not stay.
I have this question for you all: What is our focus now, and what should it be?
